


kindled

by awkwardspaceturtle



Category: Bleach
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, Drabble Sequence, F/M, First Love, Fluff and Angst, Friends to Lovers, Grief/Mourning, Memories, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-30
Updated: 2020-08-30
Packaged: 2021-03-06 14:55:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26190763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/awkwardspaceturtle/pseuds/awkwardspaceturtle
Summary: kindleverb.to light or set a fire; arouse or inspire (an emotion or feeling)Or; a series of pre- and post-canon drabbles from Ichigo's POV.
Relationships: Inoue Orihime/Kurosaki Ichigo
Comments: 6
Kudos: 34





	kindled

**Author's Note:**

> i wanted to post this in time for Ichihime Week 2020 but due to technical difficulty, i lost the original story and had to redo the entire thing. i was initially quite disheartened and frustrated hence it took longer for me to finish, but i guess the original draft wasn't meant to be the one i would publish here.
> 
> anyways, this is for the theme of strength and protection, and heck i'll just throw in Day 5 theme's of skinny love because i couldn't take away a bit of yearning while exploring this in ichigo's perspective /shrugs/
> 
> i had a half-breakdown in the middle of the writing process lmao but this turned out into something i felt proud of sharing. i hope you enjoy this late offering to Ichihime Week 2020 <3
> 
> p.s. TW for a bit of blood and death for orihime's brother's scene, and bullying
> 
> xx

_Delicate_ \- the word more often than not shadowed her, dropped from the lips of people who didn’t quite know her.

She was a flower that bloomed in a meadow of tongues of razor-edged grass. A gentle princess in need of saving, most people would make the mistake of assuming. Old wives with otherwise good intentions would often talk about how she could always find a man to take care of her if only she would come down from her castle in the clouds, if she would just trade her childish hairpins for something more befitting of a lady. And yet she carried on her own path, taking every day one step at a time. She wore her smile like a tender ray of sunshine in Karakura town’s rain.

But Ichigo _knew_ her, far beyond the colorful tales twisted around cherry-topped sundaes, that she wasn’t always the picture of sun-kissed flower fields.

In his eyes, she was a lotus that bloomed beautiful and headstrong above murky waters.

His first memory of her was painted in the palette of a nightmare.

In hindsight, the day he met her was probably the worst day of her life.

He was no stranger to injuries and wounds that needed immediate treatment after taking the role of young assistant in his dad’s clinic, yet nothing he had seen before had prepared him for what awaited beyond their entrance door - a young girl with a face full of tears, carrying the body of a young man on her back. Blood followed them from all the way down the street like a grotesque calligraphy brush stroke. The sun had only risen in a low arch against the sky, marking the beginning of a new day. Ichigo thought it painfully ironic to be the end of something so fragile.

“Please…” The young girl begged, tears thick like syrup in her throat. “I don’t know what to do… please help my brother…”

Ichigo’s dad appeared behind him almost immediately. Ichigo had never seen him look so shaken at the sight of a patient entering their door.

She seemed unwilling to part with her brother at first, but she let Ichigo’s dad lift the body off her and onto the operating table. The body looked heavy, strength had long since started to ebb from the man it once was.

Frozen cold by the claws of his own memory of losing a loved one, Ichigo had to be called twice to bring a blanket, a clean rag and warm water to help clean up the poor girl with.

It was only when he came close enough to wipe her face that Ichigo had a good look at her. The back of her pristine white uniform was drenched with blood. The tips of her hair clumped together in dark red tufts, her hands were bloodied all the way to the inside of her fingernails. Her voice had left her, but the tears kept falling, drenching the front of her uniform.

He could see in her bloodshot eyes that she was scared, confused, and remorseful about something. She looked like a million tragedies rolled into one, but she planted her feet firmly -- albeit trembling -- and refused to leave her brother’s side.

Ichigo couldn’t remember going to school that day. He could recall hearing his dad talking gently to the girl, something about their equipment being insufficient and an ambulance on its way. Her own words failed her and she simply nodded.

It didn’t take long for a rather transparent mass to materialize beside her. Ichigo knew without a shadow of doubt that it was her brother -- standing and crying and bloodied, looking at his own body, face gaunt and gray on the table. He was saying something to the girl, but she couldn’t hear him. None of them ever do, Ichigo thinks with a resounding pang in his chest. The departed have so many things to say, and so many regrets.

The deafening wail of the ambulance came not too long after. With a heavy hart and a silent prayer perched on his tongue, he closed his eyes, knowing that no one can help the girl and her brother now.

Ichigo would later learn from his dad that the girl’s nearest relatives had been contacted. Isshin accompanied her at the hospital until the Inoues arrived to take over matters.

Were her parents not around, Ichigo asked. Isshin only sighed and looked at something in the far distance before telling his son that tough times waited ahead for the girl.

Ichigo thought back on the pained expression on her brother’s face, the void that stretched far beyond in the eyes of his distraught sister, his voice no longer reaching her. He thought of the girl again when he first laid eyes on her, small and skinny and frail under the weight of her dying family. He thought of the trail of blood, of how long she must have carried him, of how she even mustered the strength to lift herself and her brother up from the point where her life took a drastic turn.

He wondered how she would lift herself up from all this grief. He didn’t know her, but his heart learned to ache for a stranger’s pain nonetheless.

He tried to remember her face, but it was lost in a sea of blood and tears. She slowly disappeared like a burning candle in his mind, but his admiration of her burned longer still.

One day in middle school, his friend Tatsuki came to class nursing a gash on her arm. Intrigued by the battle scar, their classmates flocked her, eager to fish for details. Having had his fair share of injuries, Ichigo leaned back on his chair, nonchalant. Too early in the day and everyone was being noisy.

“Did you get into a boss fight, Tatsuki?”

“What fight?” Tatsuki arched an eyebrow. “I got it protecting Orihime from a rabid dog. I fell down the river like some lameass.”

This suddenly gave birth to another uproar, but this time over something else entirely.

“You’re friends with Inoue from Class A?”

“The goddess of Class A and Tatsuki?”

“But she’s so cute and smart and pretty!”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Tatsuki bellowed, but the ensuing commotion had receded to the periphery of Ichigo’s mind as he pondered why the name ‘Inoue’ sounded familiar.

Her hair had grown considerably longer since the last time he’d seen her.

Ichigo would only realize this much much later, when he finally pieced together what made her so familiar to him, but right now was a cool autumn afternoon in middle school, and his mind was preoccupied with his latest spar with Tatsuki. Defeated again, he was pumped to work on improving himself.

They both emerged from the school gate fresh out of karate practice when they spotted her in the middle of three high school girls. They didn’t strike Ichigo to be very friendly at all.

“Is the color of your hair even allowed at your school?”

“Don’t go thinking you can do whatever you want just because you have a big rack.”

“Maybe you need to be taught your place.”

“P-please, don’t pull my hair…”

Ichigo knew all too well how petty words could easily lead to big squabbles, or worse, to flying fists. More often than he’d liked, he was a favorite target of bullying. The bright flaming hair his mother gifted him made him a target. He made sure to never let anyone make him think that way, and he fought tooth and nail to honor that which she left him.

The girl being picked on had the same, albeit darker orange hair.

“Orihime!” Tatsuki yelled before Ichigo could make a move. She fished out her phone from her pocket and immediately took pictures of the scene.

“If you flat-chested old hags don’t scram right now, one click and this picture goes to my uncle who’s a board member at your school!” She puffed out her chest and looked as menacing as possible. Years of friendship taught Ichigo that Tatsuki’s fists were tempted to invoke some well-deserved violence, but she kept her cool to keep the situation from escalating. That’s Tatsuki for you; just when he thought he had given her all the respect he could give, she proved to be worthy of more.

“You better leave her alone if you don’t want your social life to be over.” Tatsuki warned through gritted teeth. Her tenacity alone could ward tigers off a young defenseless deer.

A moment of prideful hesitation lingered before they gave in. “Tsk, whatever, she isn’t worth it.” One of them said begrudgingly and they all left without looking back. Ichigo knew well enough that it was code for defeat.

“Orihime, are you okay?” Tatsuki said just as she caught her friend when her legs finally gave in.

“Tatsuki-chan…” Inoue Orihime finally allowed herself to crumble. She held all her tears back the entire time. “I’m sorry you had to protect me again.”

“What are you talking about?” Tatsuki shook her by the shoulders. “You wanted to walk home together so you stood your ground, didn’t you?”

Behind her, Ichigo’s face broke into a smile. Tatsuki was a good friend and a hero in her own right. Her strength both intimidated and earned the utmost admiration of the young Ichigo.

“Besides, no one gets to pick on your hair while I’m around,” Tatsuki continued, her face soft. "Right, Ichigo?”

Dumbfounded at suddenly being passed the ball for conversation, Ichigo only mumbled a short and silent “Yeah” which probably made him sound like a lameass. Tatsuki was quick to call him out on his ‘boring reply’ because she expected something more profound for someone who was also picked on for having orange hair.

“You are so lame. Tell her she has beautiful hair or something!”

“Why would I say something so bold like that?”

“You don’t know how to talk to women, Ichigo!”

“Ha!?”

He couldn’t really remember how the bickering ended and when they started walking back home together. Looking back, he could recall with brilliant clarity, the radiant face of Inoue Orihime smiling behind her drying tears as she walked silently beside Tatsuki. And yes, despite his words failing him, he did think that her hair was beautiful.

She found her way back to the front lines of his memory in the backdrop of a sunset.

After spending his day with friends, he was walking by the river on his way home on a Saturday afternoon when he saw her down the same path going the other direction. She wasn’t alone; she was surrounded by three kids talking animatedly around her, and she had another kid hanging on her shoulders in a piggy back ride. She laughed heartily at something they said, her hairpins catching the light of the setting sun.

The sight of her brought Ichigo back to that bloody morning, to the young girl with the saddest eyes he had ever seen. _It’s her_ , he realized with a jolt as the memory of that day surged like a big tidal wave and crashed loudly against the threshold of his mind.

He realized that he must have not recognized her because ever since he started to notice her presence at school, he had never seen Inoue without a smile. It almost felt too surreal that the girl he had met that day was the same girl who was known for her happy-go-lucky eccentricity in class.

“Hime-neechan, that scary man is looking at you funny.”

Surprised at his own lapse of awareness in his surroundings, Ichigo hadn’t realize that he’d been staring.

“O-oh, Kurosaki-kun!” Inoue almost looked like she was about to bump into an invisible wall. She seemed to always be jittery around him for some reason. He was close to Tatsuki, but Inoue always retreated back behind her shadow when their paths met.

“Everything alright, Inoue?” Ichigo asked.

“A-all good! Keiichiro-kun here bruised his knee playing by the river. We actually just came back from your Dad’s clinic.” She also had the habit of avoiding his eyes. It made Ichigo want to know why, but he never asked out of suspicion that it would drive her farther if he did.

It seemed that she wasn’t the only one looking stiff as a board. The kids seemed to be in varying hues of nervous. One girl hid behind Inoue’s long skirt, one boy simply stared warily at him and the other looked hike he was ready to fight. The one perched on Inoue’s back was half-hiding behind her shoulder.

Sensing how they were all on edge, Inoue squared her own shoulders and shrugged off her own blanket of nervousness. “Guys, this is Kurosaki-kun. His face is just like that, but he’s really kind.”

“What’s that supposed to mean…?” Ichigo mumbled under his breath.

“Is he your boyfriend, Hime-nee?”

“W-what, no he’s a classmate in high school!” She seemed more flustered and surprised than how Ichigo felt.

“I’ll make a better man than him, Hime-neechan!”

“You’re too good for him anyway!”

“Hime-nee I’m hungry…” Keiichiro said through his tears, his stomach growling unabashedly.

“Aren’t you guys too young to talk about these things…?” Ichigo muttered, but the kids were already pulling on Inoue’s skirt and pushing her away so that they could go on their merry way.

“W-we’ll be going on ahead Kurosaki-kun,” Inoue called over his shoulder, her ears burning as bright as the setting sun. The tips of her hair lit up like strands of embers in the afternoon wind. “Take care on your way back.”

“I’ll see you at school Inoue,” Ichigo called after her, feeling oddly confused at their short encounter. He couldn’t quite place it then, but he felt somewhat bothered that their conversation didn’t even last two minutes. Maybe he should’ve offered to walk her home. He should probably do that the next time he saw her outside of school.

He stood looking at her walking away for longer than he intended. There was no trace of the girl who hundched over helplessly beside her dying brother on the operating table. There was only the smiling Inoue Orihime, standing with her back straight as she faced the future head on.

And yet Ichigo knew, as he recognized with sobering familiarity, that grief wasn’t something that could be forgotten. He kept his in a box hidden inside him as he learned to live with it, like old belongings that were kept in the attic rather than being thrown out completely. Because grief, he learned, wasn’t something that could be thrown out, nor agreed to stay out. It became a part of him, an extension of that grew from himself that he couldn’t cut off because that grief was also a memory of her. It was proof that his mother existed, that she died protecting him.

Inoue, he thought, must be carrying the same box inside of her.

For some inexplicable reason accompanied by a rush of emotions he could neither name nor decide on at the moment, a fervent desire to get to know her took root in his chest, the seed of which drank hungrily from the waters of curiosity and… something else. It would take years for this seed to grow and blossom in his ribcage before he would decide to examine and acknowledge it for what it really was.

As the sun dipped low in the horizon and took its light with it, he swore to himself that if there was anything at all that he could do for Inoue, he would like to protect her smile.

The following years opened so many bridges that connected him to her.

She showed him that brute force wasn’t the only way to deal with hollows, that kindness albeit often overlooked was a sword forged in light that could penetrate the darkness.

She straightened his doubts and made him realize that he’d always had the courage and resolve to march headstrong into Soul Society.

She amazed him with how fast her healing powers had grown in such short time, that she can heal his gravest of injuries in minutes.

She taught him that he was capable of being so devastatingly scared of losing someone when he heard that she may have been killed by the Arancar. He would immediately be surprised at his own anger at her being easily branded a traitor.

She made him realize how much it pained him to see her scared of him, that if she couldn’t look him in the eyes like she did before, his resolve could easily crumble like a castle made of sand.

She eased his doubts and fears of his own dark strength when she cried out her worries for his safety. He found that he could draw out so much more strength from his weakened body if she so much as asked him. He learned that he relied so much on just the sound of her voice, that without a moment’s hesitation, he would always put her safety first, even in death.

She pulled him from the claws of darkness, and brought him back with renewed strength.

She continued to inspire him with her amazing ability to rise up from the ashes of tragedy, to defy the gravity threatening to pull her down.

She protected him in the only ways she knew how, and he fought just as enough to ensure her safety without undermining her own strength.

Day by day with her, melting the walls they built around themselves, until they stood side by side at the fore front of battle, close enough that her radiance threatened to blind him. He didn’t know when he started thinking that if it meant standing by her side forever, maybe he wouldn’t mind losing all his senses.

Ichigo would later admit to himself that he might have known all long what it was -- the fact that in all those years he never looked at anyone else but the only girl who mattered -- Orihime.

The flame of his quiet yearning burned bright and constant despite it being shoved in the periphery of his mind to make room for the pressing battles that came right after his high school life started. With his destiny barging in hard and fast on all sides, he hadn’t allowed himself to be lulled into the desire to make it known to her, to have this time with her and care for her -- to let her know how much he thought of her and how she anchored him, that he had moored his boat to her shores without want for return to the sea.

He almost lost her so many times, yet she never gave up on his strength, and he too learned to rely on hers. He knew he wanted to let her know, eloquence be damned.

“I love you.”

He said, and the truth and entirety of it was so immense, it almost made him dizzy. That, or the fact that they both decided to put their date in the amusement park on hold when they found a kid crying and looking for his parents in the parking lot, and they spent the hotter part of the day walking and running around.

When the kid was finally reunited with his parents and they allowed themselves to rest at a nearby bench, he noticed that Orihime looked uncomfortable in her sandals. He ran off quickly to buy her a comfortable pair of bunny-themed sneakers at a nearby merchandise stall. It looked tacky and childish but Orihime could make even these look good on her. He returned to kneel in front of her and eased her aching foot into one sneaker when he suddenly professed years of carefully compartmentalized feelings for her.

“I love you, Orihime,” he repeated with more conviction this time, and he willed his eyes to meet hers. “I think I have, every day for the longest time. I love you.”

“Ichigo…” He could never get tired of hearing his name falling from her lips.

“I really would like to make you happy for all the years to come,” he continued. His throat felt coarse, thick with a potpourri of relief and nervousness and passion and so much more. “You are my strength, you inspire me in so many ways that you don’t even know. And I’d like to let you know just how, every day from here on out. I love you.”

“I love you, too,” she said as she caught his face in her hands and leaned down. He closed his eyes and met her kiss, savoring it despite the urgency in his bones. They had kissed a few times before this, but this time felt different.

She held his face gingerly after their lips parted, their foreheads pressed together. When he learned how it felt to lean into her touch, he found that he couldn’t find the strength to live without it if he could. She could send ripples of electricity into his body without so much as lifting a finger, and he’d gladly let her.

“I’m so happy right now.”

“I’m sorry our date didn’t quite go as planned,” Ichigo said, his voice soft as he kneaded his fingers gently around her ankle.

“No,” she shook her head. “It went even better than planned.”

_Delicate_ \- something easily broken, weak - nothing she touched ever was, nothing beyond repair that she couldn’t heal. Her strength and power lifted so many of their comrades back into optimal conditions.

She was a broken vase whose pieces were put back together with molten gold. A gentle princess whose kindness and unwavering faith became the salvation of many. She wore her flaming hair long and her hairpins with pride, walking her own path and living the life her brother fiercely fought for her to have. In every smile she let him know that she was happy.

Ichigo felt incredibly lucky to be the one she chose to walk beside her. There were no other footsteps he’d follow, no other hand he would hold like he did hers. In her loving gaze, he knew no place that was warmer.

Stories were always told about how the knight in shining armor saves the princess and seizes the day. In Ichigo’s book, it went a lot different. These would be the stories he would share with his son much later -- of how the hero was saved by the faith of his friends in him, and how the love of his special person gave him the strength to pull through anything.

Ichigo looked towards the future with a smile of his own, knowing that his own mother was watching him making good on his promise to her -- that he would protect that which was precious to him.

As he held Orihime’s hand to put a ring on her finger, he recited the vows that had long since existed in his head yet remained unsaid until that moment. She smiled, and he found himself crying because he was living a dream. Heck, he married his dream.

They sealed their vows with a kiss.

“I can’t believe I married my dream,” Orihime whispered against his lips, echoing what had just been on his mind.

“Me, too,” he confessed, a blush blossoming on his cheeks.

He was no artist, but with her hand in his, he knew they could paint their future in the palette of stardust and eternal sunshine.

**Author's Note:**

> i really can't wait for the final arc to be animated and see them all again ;_;
> 
> thank you for reading! kudos and/or comments are love <3
> 
> xx


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